impending doom

If you've been following the news, it seems North Korea has once again failed to (a) live up to its promises and (b) have any respect whatsoever for the United Nations. Allegedly the Hermit Kingdom has once again fully restarted its nuclear program and has conducted an underground nuclear test and fired at least five missiles in the past week. Smoke and steam sightings lead some to believe that it has cranked up its nuclear fuel processing plants again, which you may remember were demolished about a year ago now, right after I got here.

Furthermore, North Korea has stepped up the bluster. It insists that it will respond with strong, "horrifying, incalculable" vengeance and military action should South Korea or the United States impede its shipping, or interfere in any other way.

Yeah, right. Heard it before. I don't care if they mean it or not, though. I think we should take the bastards. I realize that the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is not fully resolved, but I'm getting a stronger and stronger "Saddam Hussein" vibe from Kim Jong-Il here, and I think it's time he and his entire regime were removed from power, the dictatorial government dismantled and North and South finally reunified and placed under a democratic government.

Furthermore (as I'm writing in my novel) I believe it is the duty of the most powerful (in this case, the United States) to forcibly effect such drastic action against an oppressed country under the brutal rule of an egomaniac. Moreover I don't want a nuke dropped on Busan when I'm sitting here less than fifty miles away on an unprotected island. So could the U.S. military kindly step in and stomp on those buggers before they get out of hand? Like, now?

The North Koreans, by their own admission in their propagandist "newspapers," spit on U.N. sanctions. They're as ineffective as striking a rock with a rotten egg, as has been stated in the commentary section. Politics is not going to work here, people. It's time for hard, decisive action.

In keeping with the title of this blog post, I've included this, for your viewing pleasure: the first millisecond of a nuclear explosion. Doesn't that just do your head in?